I have a few minutes here at church before choir practice (the joys of Being Green and only having one vehicle--James has a meeting at 7pm, so I get to kill half an hour before choir starts at 7:30pm), so I'll take this chance to jot down a few thoughts. Our trip to Tucson was fun in the sun, it was really hard to say goodbye to everyone again, and it confirmed for both James and I that we made the right move at the right time to the right place. We returned to clean white snow (covering all the ugly gray stuff that was left when we left) and, surprisingly, a few days of sunshine. It's impossible to put into words why we feel that our move has been the right one--it's one of those intuitive "it just feels right" kind of things--but the fact that we both feel it tells us that we're not wrong in feeling right. Members of the congregation here in Pittsfield were mighty glad to see us return (they were afraid we'd realize what a horrible mistake we'd made in leaving the warmer climes of Tucson). And the latest financial report shows that so far the momentum is moving in a desirable direction since James began his ministry here--the $$ are increasing! Which is always a sign of increasing enthusiasm. It's too bad we have to measure success in terms of money even at a church, but it is usually an accurate reflection of the prevailing spirit.

Last night a new snowfall highlighted some architectural elements I hadn't even known were there on our arbor in the back yard. Curlicue things at the upper corners that look like Santa's eyebrows with 3 inches of snow on them now. I'd never noticed them before! Now I'm curious as to what they look like without the snow. Obviously a subtle presence. Or I'm just super unobservant... (James hadn't noticed them before, either. OK, so we're both unobservant.)

For those of you keeping track, I finally put the ribbons on our master bathroom shower curtain, so that room is Done as well. And I added brocade panels to the bottoms of the turquoise scarfy thing on the guest bathroom shower curtain, so that room is Done Done. For real. Done. Really.